I am looking for a simplistic understanding of AMT. I had thought that it was, (again simplistically,) a way to make sure that your deductions were not excessive wrt your income.

We got hit with AMT this year for the first time. It was a fabulous year income wise, with the start up DH works for basically giving him a 150% bonus. Some surprises can be nice.

So while we made 2.5 times last years return's income, our deductions did not change hardly at all, and are the very basic deductions for kids, taxes paid, and primary residence taxes and mortgage interest. The one rather insignificant change was for $1,000 real estate taxes for a vacation home we bought last year. But the AMT worksheet shows us owing an extra $7,000 over the regular filing.

What am I missing in my misunderstanding of AMT, or did DH potentially screw up somewhere in the TurboTax filing??

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